Editorial: Police Anonymity or Public Accountability

It’s now been over two months since two Salinas police officers shot and killed Carlos Mejia on May 20th. It was the second deadly shooting that month involving Salinas police officers, the third for the year at that time, and just a little more than two weeks ago there was a fourth.

The circumstances surrounding each shooting are different, but the aftermath of each has one important element in common: Salinas police are refusing to make public the names of the officers involved.

You may recall that we at KSBW – along with our media partners in this matter, The Californian newspaper, KION-TV and KSMS-TV, filed a California Public Records Act request for the identities of all officers involved in each shooting. This month, we also filed a CPRA request for the identity of the officer involved in the July 10th shooting. For each of these cases, our request was flatly denied. The city’s rationale: specific threats – and that word “specific” is key here - against the police officers.

On Thursday, a Santa Ana based attorney, hired by the city to deal with our media requests - we believe to stonewall against them - released a packet of documents which purportedly are evidence of the “specific” threats against the officers. In it are pictures of graffiti, emails and more; but after reviewing them, we are hard pressed to find anything specific directed at anybody. It’s more just a collection of photos and blustery emails, colorfully worded at times, but hardly threatening.

To see for yourself, we’ve posted the entire packet provided to us by the city by clicking here.

With news reports from around the world, we have certainly seen that some countries have made disheartening strides in advancing police anonymity. Usually led by political despots or military dictators, police officers operate with balaclava hoods firmly in place, making only their eyes and sometimes their mouth visible. These police operate with impunity, using fear and intimidation to keep order, with no public or media accountability. While we do not believe the Salinas PD has balaclava hoods on their equipment wish list, this new standard operating procedure they’ve displayed, cloaking the identity of officers involved in any shooting incidents, is nothing short of an “administrative balaclava.”

The police have a tough job – we’d never argue otherwise – but public accountability for sworn law enforcement officers is paramount for any free society.